Born the son of a peasant, Jean-François Millet received a scholarship from the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris, but in 1849 he returned to his native Barbizon, where he painted his most important works. Millet quickly became the most important representative of French realism. The best-known of his works are dedicated to the everyday work and life of the peasants, are held in soft, light brown shades and earth tones and radiate in a golden, soft light.
Millet said: "The theme of the peasants is best suited to my nature, at the risk of being called a socialist: the human side touches me the most in art, the joyous side never shows itself to me, I do not know if It never exists, I have never seen it The most beautiful thing I know is the silence, the silence that is so precious in the forest as on the cultivated fields, always giving me a dreamlike feeling Dream is a sad one, he is often a very delicious dream. "
Especially famous are Millet's "The Gleaners". Created in 1857, the painting shows three stooped farm women in the evening light at the field work. The "angelus peal", which shows two peasants praying over a basket of potatoes, made such feelings of discomfort with Salvador Dalí that he could cause the Louvre to do an x-ray on the canvas to prove that Millet was actually the funeral of one Child showed. When, in fact, the sketch of a black box was found, Dalí wrote a book called Le Mythe tragique de l'Angélus de Millet. "The Sower" inspired
Vincent van Gogh to write his own version of the subject in The Sower of the Setting Sun.
© Meisterdrucke